| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: slavery, lest he should swallow up the Union, now recognizes
anti-slavery as a characteristic of future civilization. Signs
and wonders follow this movement; and the fact just stated is one
of them. Party ties are loosened by it; and men are compelled to
take sides for or against it, whether they will or not. Come
from where he may, or come for what he may, he is compelled to
show his hand. What is this mighty force? What is its history?
and what is its destiny? Is it ancient or modern, transient or
permanent? Has it turned aside, like a stranger and a sojourner,
to tarry for a night? or has it come to rest with us forever?
Excellent chances are here for speculation; and some of them are
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: lose his ability to make love to charming women, and that
she had a pair of gold stockings. They gaped for more. But
she could not keep it up. She retired to a chair behind Sam
Clark's bulk. The smile-wrinkles solemnly flattened out in
the faces of all the other collaborators in having a party, and
again they stood about hoping but not expecting to be amused.
Carol listened. She discovered that conversation did not
exist in Gopher Prairie. Even at this affair, which brought
out the young smart set, the hunting squire set, the respectable
intellectual set, and the solid financial set, they sat up
with gaiety as with a corpse.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States
be lawfully possible, the Union is LESS perfect than before the Constitution,
having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion
can lawfully get out of the Union; that Resolves and Ordinances
to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence,
within any State or States, against the authority of the United States,
are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care,
as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the
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